Feast Your Eyes: Photos of the Microbes That Inhabit Your Gut

The image above shows a spray of Penicillium, the fungus that creates the characteristic blue-gray molding on St. Maure (and other blue) cheese. Look at its shape: Agapakis explains that Penicillium takes its name from the Latin word for paintbrush, peniculus.

According to fermentation guru Sandor Katz, "Eating bacteria is one of life's greatest pleasures." In a recent profile of Katz in the New Yorker, reporter Burkhard Bilger writes:

Beer, wine, cheese, bread, cured meats, coffee, chocolate: our best-loved foods are almost all fermented. They start out bitter, bland, cloying, or indigestible and are remade by microbes into something magnificent.